Richard Hibbert, SureCloud chief exec, said that the firm's "security as a service" approach allows it to target SME and local government customers to meet compliance standards on a lower budget and without buying a variety of point products and services from the likes of Cisco, HP and Qualys.

The SaaS-based auditing and compliance automation service is designed to help mid-market organisations in regulated industries to simplify and reduce the cost of fulfilling their security management and information compliance obligations – making it easier for them to comply with the credit-card industry's PCI-DSS regime, for example.

SureCloud’s hybrid offering ties together products from multiple third-party vendors, but the firm doesn't disclose whose technology it is using.

The platform is designed to simplify the whole compliance process from data discovery through to providing actionable intelligence about vulnerabilities, via a single dashboard the provides data on threats and network activity. Customers gain the opportunity to significantly reduce their risk from data breaches as well as ability to manage their compliance commitments using fewer staff and without buying complex kit from multiple suppliers, says the firm.

"Customers can do more with less budget," Hibbert said. "Our platform helps customers to minimise security monitoring and remediation costs," he added.

Established in 2006, SureCloud is based in Reading and says it has more than 200 customers throughout the UK, which include a large number of local authorities and other customers in retail, financial services and gambling. The firm has aspirations to expand overseas, initially to English-speaking countries. ®